Campaign of the Month:
January 2015

Skies of Glass

Dark Apprentice's Carver

Category:

tool

Description:

This twisted device was created to give dark insight to those walking the bloody path. Though clearly formed by novice hands, the pen is imbued with powerful magics and tipped with dragonbone – efforts and resources not lightly spent.

Dark Apprentice’s Carver

Type: Sangromantic Pen

Material: Young dragonbone and unknown bone (Poor quality material)

Craft Check: 21

Caster level: 13

The Apprentice’s Carver is a powerful tool for novice sangromancers beginning to tap the darker corners for the knowledge they seek, but a toll must be paid to draw upon this knowledge. Activating the pen requires the wielder make a sangromantic sacrifice of an intelligent creature to the pen (gaining no further benefit from the sacrifice). A sangromancer (and only a sangromancer) may alternately choose to sacrifice their own blood to the pen, taking an amount of Constitution damage as listed below depending on their ranks in Knowledge (Blood Magic).

Once activated, the wielder may ask one question of the pen, making an appropriate knowledge check (or checks, if necessary) with a bonus equal to one-third their ranks in Knowledge (Blood Magic). The sangromancer may choose to take 10 on this check, just as if they were using a library (though they cannot choose to take 20 as one could with a normal library). The pen can draw upon a surprisingly deep reservoir of knowledge, and some checks made with the pen may be considered more common knowledge than normal. However, the pen is far from omniscient and regardless of the check may simply not possess an answer – though on sufficiently high checks it may occasionally provide a clue or some other unique insight, regardless of its own knowledge of the situation (GM discretion). The pen may alternately be called upon to act as a tutor for Knowledge (Blood Magic), and may train the wielder in ranks 2 through 10 so long as they meet the necessary prerequisites for whatever Blood Magic path they’re following.

Once queried, the pen will take control of the questioning sangromancer’s writing arm, writing with a fevered passion for hours on end. Even a simple answer will take a minimum of 1d4 hours to answer (spending much of the time scribbling maddening nonsense or drawing arcane glyphs of seemingly no importance), though complex questions may take longer (as-per using a library). If used as a tutor, it requires as long as is necessary for such tutelage. Sufficient writing material must be provided (typically one notebook per 4 hours of work), otherwise the pen will take to writing on tables, walls, or even carving it into the wielder’s flesh. No ink is necessary for this process, as the pen processes the blood it has gorged upon into a fine red ink. Unfortunately, the mad ramblings of the pen make sense only to the sangromancer who asked the question.

1 to 4 ranks: 2d4 points of Constitution damage

5 to 9 ranks: 1d4 points of Constitution damage

10 to 14 ranks: 1d3 points of Constitution damage

15 to 19 ranks: 1d2 points of Constitution damage

20 or more ranks: 1 points of Constitution damage

So long as this pen exists, Constitution damage dealt by it cannot be healed by most mystical means – only Sangromancy spells or healing spells fueled by a Sacrifice spell may heal this damage. This damage may also be recovered naturally through rest.

Amanuensis: The dark apprentices carver can be used at-will to activate an Amanuensis effect. The ink must still be provided for every activation.